Hell send them his budget and tell them to pass it. They will continue to appease him and give up their power willingly.
Large amounts of money will be sequestered into special accounts for “unforseen contingencies” and then magically disapear or more likely be openly spent in patronage grifts.
I’m looking for feet first, and the fun times begin as every Republican and Elmo decide if they’ll support Vance.
Few of the complaints brought since Jan. 20 name Trump, or only him. Instead, they name the heads or acting heads of departments and agencies, and sometimes other officials as well. News reports mislead when they speak of “the Trump administration” or “the White House” being sued. We should be imagining a Scott Bessant or Kristi Noem, not Trump, being held in contempt. It would take persistent and clear contempt for a judge even to fine such officials (which their dept./agency would pay), but if a judge did reach the point of attempting to jail any of these officials, I imagine that U.S. Marshals would feel less trepidation in taking them into custody than many of us commenters here have been imagining.
Btw, this is a useful reference. NYU law school tracking all the suits being brought against Trump and members of his administration.
Josh Marshall and many others are confident that neither Thune nor especially Johnson has the votes to pass a budget without some Democrats’ votes.
Agree with this. The minions will be the ones in the hot seats. Trump can bellow commandments all he wants but when all his minions are in lock-up for Contempt of Court, he won’t have anyone to carry out his orders or bring him Diet Cokes.
This whole thing is going to turn into a running gun battle / paper chase / popcorn festival before too long. The two guys who should carrying their toothbrushes in their coat pockets are Bessent and Vought.
Unfortunately the chaos could sink the economy while it all plays out. Should be entertaining in a macabre way though.
It’s seeming more and more that there’s only one hope left.
Who’s going to arrest them? The ghost of RBG?
But as Josh keeps saying, any D support has to come with a steep price tag. Josh says the deal point is “We’re just going to make sure ending the wave of criminality stops as part of any deal.” Sounds reasonable, but what happens when the GOP Congress decides it cannot / will not do anything to stop the criminality? Where is the enforcement mechanism?
Not a good place to be, thinking about Peter Navarro as I prepare to bed. I got to remembering his whining complaints about his arrest (something about leg irons?) and wondering which law enforcement agents arrested him. He was being held in contempt of Congress, but the charge was lodged in a federal court, no? So, did FBI agents arrest him? So I assume. Not U.S. Marshals… (Thanks to Josh Marshall, I keep having to delete the extra “l” I first put on “Marshals.”) Certainly not the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House. (There’s another one for the Senate.) There’s also the ATF and god only knows what else. So many law-enforcement entities in our federal government that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Same with the military. Not just the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and let’s not forget Space Force. ICE. The CIA has some kind of “army” or “force” (as I learned when we first went into Afghanistan – the first American killed there was in that “army,” a local boy against whom my son must have played soccer in high school).
So, Peter Navarro. He’s back in (some) news. (Why do journalists give idiots like Navarro any oxygen?) He’s touting the brilliance of Trump’s tariff games. He’s probably hoping for the ambassadorship or some other post he thinks his loyalty to Trump (4 months in prison) should have earned him. Let’s hope Bondi, Musk, et the many alii end up in a trash heap as Navarro has. MSN cribbing Politico:
We’re good and fucked.
US Marshals duly deputized by a Judge - in the limit Justice Roberts. These US Marshalls could include a Division of Army Rangers if required and deputized by a Judge.
If the Trump Administration does NOT follow Court orders, then we are no longer a nation of laws and Trump has “officially”authorized chaos.
The POTUS should want to preserve and protect public order because his position and his well-being depend on it. Pissing off over 200 million people in a country with this many uncontrolled firearms is just a bad idea.
One other point. Trump was impeached twice and escaped conviction in the Senate by only a handful of votes. If he had been convicted and was still in office, he most certainly would NOT leave voluntarily. It would be up to US Marshals to physically remove him from office.
Enforcing a Court Order on the White House is essentially the same thing. If we are to avoid becoming an Autocracy, we must have the courage and imagination to neutralize and remove a criminal POTUS or Cabinet member because that is what we are dealing with.
Trump has plenty of ways to legally get what policy goals he wants, but he can’t act like a tyrant like Putin or Xi and get away with it unless WE let him.
In the end, it is up to We The People to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
“What happens if Donald Trump decides he doesn’t want to abide by the traditional ruling? What’s the recourse? ‘Nothing,’ Goodman summarized.
‘That is the doomsday scenario that a lot of lawyers are worried about.’"
This is a very good question.
If they decline to take a case because they are concerned tRump might ignore the ruling then a precedent has been set: he can ignore court rulings.
Schumer is a nice man. He understands the law and the testing of the evidence. He’s out to lunch as far as dealing with a full-on AI-assisted assault on the government and corporate sectors. Messaging has to be super-simple, blunt. Josh gets this. Theft through bullying is not governance. Ever.
“American Constitutionalism is essentially over.”
Gotta come to terms with it. The American Experiment ended when he was elected. Electing an unrepentant felon to enforce the laws is inherently contradictory, thus the rule of law is dead.
Autocratic Breakthrough is here now. It’s happening.
